Anyone know anything about refrigerators & pet hair??

I have a refrigerator that's less than a year old that stopped cooling last night but freezer was cold as could be and frosted over to boot (shouldn't be it's a self defrosting). We cleaned out TONS of cat hair from underneath and piled all our stuff into coolers and it's defrosting how. Hopefully once the ice build up clears it will run fine again.

My question is this. How damaging to the fridge would it be to put a thin lightweight filter fabric/foam over the toe guard (even just part way up) to keep the cat hair from ever getting in there in the first place??? I don't want the thing to overheat, but seems to me Air Conditioners, vacuum cleaners, cars etc all have filters, why not a fridge??

Anyone ever try this? Or know anyone that's tried it? Or know enough about refrigerators to know if this would cause it to overheat?

Thanks for any input you guys have. Sorry I haven't been around in a long time. Kitties are all doing good despite the ridiculous heat wave we've been having! Hope all your pets are doing good as well!

As long as it is a light fabric that does not restrict air flow, it should be okay! You'll have to clean it off periodically, so the cat hair that accumulates on it doesn't block the ventilations, but that's easier than moving the whole fridge!

I have one of those vacuum attachments which lets you vacuum under the fridge, and I use that frequently -- twice a month at least. I think the filter idea is good IF you regularly clean that. The hair will build up on it rather fast, as I have discovered! I have forced hot air for a heat system, and put filter in the return registers as well. Darn nuisance as I also have to clean that every 2 weeks! But I know it is better than having all that cat hair going into the duct system.

We got everything thawed out and running again on the fridge. We bought a condenser coil brush and two new thermometers. So far the temps have been all fine and I haven't noticed any icing up on the freezer vents.
We also bought a second small beverage refrigerator with a very small freezer section for ice cubes. This way when it's hot out (my kitchen can reach 90 even with the A/C on) and we're in and out we're taking the load off the one with the food, and the smaller one cools back down faster. We also cut down on the stuff we're packing in the fridge & freezer. We both have a bad habit of using it for storing food like hoarding rather than what we're going to actually be using anytime soon. This should allow better air circulation inside both compartments.

I haven't yet tried the filter thing on the main refrigerator yet. I think I'm going to have to though. Last night I heard the fridge doing a fast ticking (like a clock on steroids) sound. I looked under there and WOAH you wouldn't believe the cat hair, coils were almost non visible!! I have been going out of my way to sweep up the cat hair tumbleweeds from the floor in there but apparently not enough. So I got a chance to use the coil brush. Seems to work good but really need to take the vacuum and maybe some compressed air under there to get it good, but at 1am I wasn't going that far. It's still ticking sometimes but the temps are fine and no icing though.

Just wanted to give an update for anyone who was wondering how it went.

I'm glad that you found a solution. I don't have AC and I noticed that especially on hotter days that my refrigerator doesn't cool well and it's only about 6 years old. It also has many new parts because it always had a problem keeping things cool so the repairman ended up having to add more freon to it. I ended up rolling it out and there was a lot of cat hair under it so I cleaned all of that up. Later in the week I tried to buy a condensor brush but OSH didn't have any so I ended up buying a dryer brush instead. I used it and I couldn't believe all of the cat hair that I got from brushing the condensor. I still have the setting on 7 and 9 is the coolest setting. This setting used to freeze some things in the refrigerator but so far it hasn't this time. I sure hope that I won't have to end up getting another new refrigerator any time soon. My last one lasted for a little over 17 years. They sure don't make things like they used to.